Editor’s Note

It’s April, gerbils and ladybugs. The fruit trees are flinging their blooms on the floor like temperamental flower girls, the warm breezes are riffling the ostrich feathers on our fancy-ass hats, and the robins are CHOMPING WORMS IN HALF and EATING THEM RAW, according to Emily Dickinson, noted chronicler of bird and bee activities.

Like the season, this issue passes swiftly but leaves a lingering impression of wonders and delights. You can read it cover-to-cover and still have time for a sun-dappled stroll through the botanical gardens. Or a moonlit skulk through a haunted forest, if you are of the nocturnal persuasion.

Laura Garrison

Colander

Paul Hostovsky

Yesterday I couldn’t remember the word colander, a word I love and have always thought of as one of those words that’s lovelier than the thing itself. I was holding the thing itself in my hands, the steaming angel hair pasta draining in the sink, when I looked at the colander and thought to myself, “What is the name of this thing?” And maybe it was age, and maybe it was the beginning of something more pernicious, but in the end we have to let go of everything. We have to let go of every single thing and its name. And because I have always loved the names of things more than the things themselves I stood at the sink missing colander, loving it more than the colander, more than the angel hair pasta that I chewed abstractedly over dinner, trying to locate colander in my mouth, where it used to live until it disappeared, its three slippery syllables like three spaghetti noodles in a pot of spaghetti noodles. And today, when I finally remembered it—found it right where I’d left it I whispered it to myself over and over like a lover whispering the name of a lost beloved who returns, but is untrue, and will disappear again.

PAUL HOSTOVSKY makeshislivinginBostonasasignlanguageinterpreter.His newestbookofpoemsisPITCHINGFORTHEAPOSTATES(forthcoming,Kelsay Books).HispoemshavewonaPushcartPrize,twoBestoftheNetAwards,the FutureCyclePoetryBookPrize,andhavebeenfeaturedon Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac.Website:paulhostovsky.com